Giuliani's Performance on 9-11
Here's what looks like a solid job of debunking some of the criticisms of Rudy Giuliani:
No one can deny that any executive must delegate the execution of many details to subordinates. Rudy had a team of deputy mayors, as well as fire and police commissioners and their subordinates to assist him. Barrett at no time says that Rudy did anything unethical personally involving the purchase of the radios from Motorola. Barrett mentions explicitly the person responsible, the unnamed “pivotal person at the city’s information agency.” But yet the blame falls to Mayor Giuliani who should have stopped juggling the responsibilities of managing the most dynamic city in the world to get down to the warehouse to inspect the new radios, or perhaps become a radio expert himself and personally select the radios.
Bernie Kerik addressed this issue in his testimony to the 9/11 commission stating, “Show me one radio that they will guarantee you this radio will go through that metal, it will go through the debris, it will go through the dust, and you will have 100% communication 100% of the time-there is none.”
He does not get into the kooky stuff.
Labels: Rudy Giuliani
posted by Pat @ 8:46 AM
13 comments
13 Comments:
You've got to be kidding me. Regardless of what you think about 9/11, Guiliani is thug, and his actions after 9/11 only demonstrate what an opportunist and sleazeball he is. I would suggest the book "Grand Illusion" by Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins (this has NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11 conspiracy) to anyone who hasn't already figured that out.
While this website had some interesting points to make in the beginning, it seems to be moving in the direction of becoming an organ for the Republican Party. Webster Tarpley is catering to the Democrats?? Are you serious? The man's pretty nutty, and from my research, he doesn't seem to care for either party, describing them both as tools of the "oligarchs." One thing you'll almost never find with any of these conspiracy writers is anyone playing a game of partisan politics.
I thought you guys would have picked that up by now.
If the nutters are criticizing him, he's got to be a great guy.
I don't know more about the issues than discussed in the article (which is specifically a debunking of Barrett's book.
I (Pat) am supporting John McCain, so I have no real incentive to help out Giuliani here. And it's his second cousin, which I am reliably informed means one of his parents was a cousin of one of his wife's parents; they have a common pair of great-grandparents, in other words.
I'll check what I wrote about Tarpley; I don't think I said anything about him 'catering' to the Democrats, but if I did, it needs correction/clarification.
I would suggest the book "Grand Illusion" by Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins...
Are you even aware that that's what this post is about?
In other news, Barrett has hated Giuliani since the second he (the G-man) started arresting the murderers, dealers and thugs that Barrett loves so much.
Giuliani has his faults, and among them are a tin ear and a 100% conviction in his own correctness, but to say he was unconcerned about terrorism after the first attack is not just stupidly wrong, it's a conscious lie.
First,
Yes, not only did he mayy his second cousin, but they remained married for 9 years I believe.
Second, YES, I UNDERSTAND THAT THE POST ABOVE was ATTEMPTING to debunk Barrett's book. It just did a poor job. Just because someone says they are "debunking" soemthing doesn't make it so. Barrett and Collins did great work for this book (and have for over 25 years in covering the city), while a guy like Kerik's credibility is about as solid as Dick Cheney's right now, so I don't feel that the link debunked ANYTHING. Further, Barrett actually was quite a fan of Guiliani prior to his 3rd or so year in office. . For reference, please see his book "City for Sale" about the Koch Administration, where Rudy is basically the hero. Barrett saw him as a hero because of his prosecutions of mobsters, murderers and, well... drug dealers. So please do your own homework so I don't have to do it for you.
Pat, I would take a good look at Tarpley's work. There are PLENTY of things that you can rip on him for, but "trying to be on the winning side (implied to mean the Democrats)" is not one of them. He does go after Cheney a lot in his book, but not because of his political party.
And I appreciate your honesty about being a McCain supporter. We all have our faults :)
Craig, what I meant (I have fixed the post) is not that Tarpley wanted to be on the winning side with the Democrats, he wanted to be on the winning side between the Democrats. That is, he foresees the end of the Republicans and a split in the Democrats between the Lieberman wing and the Kennedy wing, and since he's hoping for a "progressive" direction, my interpretation is that he would be in the latter camp. Granted, trying to figure out where a LaRouchie or former LaRouchie fits on the political spectrum can be a challenge, but I think it's reasonably clear from that passage.
Rudy married his own cousin. What more do you need to know about the guy.
Never heard of Einstein?
And I appreciate your honesty about being a McCain supporter. We all have our faults :)
Yours being you have trouble with the most liberal Republican candidate (you'd have a hard time telling the difference between a mainstream Democrat and Guiliani on social issues).
Pat,
I think I understand what you're saying, and I apologize for mis-reading. Still, I don't think Tarpley is what you would call a "liberal" or "preogressive." I don't think you guys could even understand his mindset, and I don't mean that to be condescending, because I don't understand it.
Let me be as up front as possible. I was very intrigued when I first started to read about the 9/11 Truth arguments. While some struck me as borderline insane, I thought some very valid questions were in there once you sifted through all the junk.
And then I went to the conference Alex Jones had last year and met most of these "leaders" of the movement. And I realized that this was NOT my crowd. Anyway, my fondest memory of Tarpley is when I went over to him and pointed out that in his book, he said that the Fresh Kills Landfill was in New Jersey, while it's actually in Staten Island, New York. He looked at me with this look of outrage and said, "I didn't write that." To which I responded, "Um, yes you did. It's really not that big a deal man, I just thought it should be pointed out." And he gracefully shot back with, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
I remember being almost shocked at the arrogance. That he couldn't just admit he screwed up the location of something, and not that badly (Jersey's a short swim away). And he reacted as if I said he's had someone ghost write that thing.
Craig, interesting story. I read factnet's section on LaRouche and scanned it for stuff on Tarpley. Not much there, but the infallibility of the leader comes through loud and clear; sounds like Tarpley learned at least that lesson from Lyndon.
The LaRouchies have been all over the spectrum, from far left to Reagan right, but at least the impression I get from Tarpley is that he's personally more comfortable with the former than the latter. He's certainly extremely antiwar (read his Unauthorized Biography of George H.W. Bush), although so is Justin Raimondo I suppose.
Pat,
Yeah, you can't really catagorize anyone for being anti-war these days. Just look at more mainstream conservatives like Robert Novak, Buchanan, General William Odom, etc...
While at the same time, lefties like Christopher Hitchens, Peter Beinart, etc... were all for the war in Iraq.
I honestly don't know what Tarpley's connection is to Larouche, but I know that the Larouche people scare me a bit (constant harrassing e-mails/calls for money). Larouche seems to be a hard one to pin down. On one hand he was all over tryign to get the impeachment charges against Clinton thrown out, but then after the 2006 election I saw that he went after Howard Dean saying that he had tried to sabotage the election for the Republicans. Whatever...
The antiwar conservatives pretty much fall into the Paleocon grouping, plus some of the libertarians. Traditional conservatives (like the National Review and WSJ Editorial Page were uniformly pro-war. It really was a completely fringe thing among Republicans and probably no better than 50/50 among Democrats.
Tarpley was LaRouche's early man in Europe. He was a reporter on foreign affairs for EIR (Executive Intelligence Report), the LaRouche newsletter. Brilliant guy no doubt about it, but you gotta figure that something wasn't right for him to turn over his life to a cult like that.
Pat, I'd disagree with you slightly. I don't think that "mainstream" conservatives all supported the invasion. "cookie cutter" republican conservatives did, but many people with very tranditionally conservative leanings (Scott Ritter, for example, who voted for Bush in 2000)were against the war. However, the neocons/conservatives that did support the war demonized them in a big way (see David Frum's piece http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6818).
Anyway, I suppose the definition of conservatism is in the eye of the beholder, but I'd be very suprised if people like Goldwater, Reagan or even Nixon would have supported this war.
Regarding Tarpley, I think you hit it right on the head.
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